phpdjangorestrestful-url

Hierarchy in Restful Url

Suppose there are resource like

  1. user - users registered

  2. book - books available in the library

  3. favourite books - users favourite books.

What is the RESTful way to construct the URL for favourite books of a user?

I have confusion on hierarchy of resources in URL. How can I form correct URLs?

The following are the URLs that comes into my mind when there is request to find out favourite books of a user.

  1. users/:user_id/favourites/books

  2. users/:user_id/books/favourites

  3. users/:user_id/favourite_books

What is the correct way of constructing the URLs?

Solution

  • I think it's a matter of personal preference.

    Is favourites an important part of the user and do you have more favorites like movies for example? Then I'd go with this one:

    1. users/:user_id/favourites/books

    Is this primarily a 'property' of a user's books and will there be more options, like for example last_read? Then I'd go with this one:

    2. users/:user_id/books/favourites

    Is this primarily a 'property' of a user and will there be more options, like for example age? Then I'd go with this one:

    3. users/:user_id/favourite_books

    You might also want to ask this question on Programmers, I think you'll get more replies there.